Mughal Administration c11.46

c11.46

The nobles had to take care not to imitate even the style of the imperial *farmans* in any way in their own letters to their colleagues or subordinates. Thus, in the last years of the reign of Aurangzib, he severely took to task Ghaziuddin Khan Bahadur Firuz Jang, one of the two highest nobles of the realm, for presuming to begin his orders with the phrase, “By the *miracle-working command* of the Khan......it is ordered that...” This was an appropriation of the royal phraseology, and Aurangzib scornfully remarked, on learning of it, that a commander of seven thousand, as Firuz Jang then was, did not possess the power of working miracles. (Hamid-ud-din’s *Ahkam*, § 35.) Aurangzib’s eldest son Muhammad Sultan, when a boy of fourteen, was censured by his father for having adopted the imperial epistolary style in an unintelligent attempt to model his own letters on those of Akbar as drafted by Abul Fazl. [*Studies in Aur. Reign*, iii. § 3.]